As a performing songwriter, this is a great way to connect with new people. A chance to be heard. I don’t think of it so much as a business, but I think there is a place for me out there. I’m not completely where I want to be as an artist. But I think there’s a market for where I am. I just need to find it. So being heard by a new audience is a good thing

There’s also the idea of going outside my comfort zone, which consists of my house and The Adelphia Music Hall. Hehehe! For me, that used to mean a bit of anxiety, or stage freight if you will. I don’t feel that now, though. That’s a good thing. Finding a comfort level when you perform is the best way to guarantee a good show. Whether I sell one cd, or one hundred, I want to do a good show and put my best foot forward. Rob Szabo says it best, starting at about the :52 mark of this video.

I love that sharing this didn’t really hit me until I started writing. They are such true words. Something to write on a card and read over before every show. I need those kind of reminders. It’s also a good segue into Rob’s latest production on Peter Katz’s new CD, Still Mind Still.

I really need to stop. Just check out Peter’s new CD. It’s so good! Hope to see you Saturday!!

I like the things I’m able to do in this video with the animated things. I just haven’t figured out how to make them a little cooler and fit the story a little better. Not bad, though.

His voice creeps up on you. Not quiet enough that you can’t hear. But just enough to make you lean in. And once you do, you’re hooked. His latest CD, North is filled with gems. My personal favorites are the title track, Country Flowers, and Late July. But that’s certainly not all I like. These songs speak to me, though.

We’re going to start the show at 8pm. More info at the Facebook event page. And heck, how bout a video?

Yeah, here’s a video! Hope to see you then!

As it turns out, there’s a lot of other people like me that just can’t seem to get to SXSW. So some really smart people put together Couch By Couch West. It’s a page that independent artists like myself can submit performances to during South By South West. I mean if you go there right now, there’s a video up of Will Kimbrough. If you’ve been here before, you know how much I’m into his music. I’ve tried to get him to play a house concert here, but the guy down the street beat me to him and Tommy Womack. You’d never know the competition is so intense to host house concerts in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Sad thing is, a friend from high school plays in Daddy with them. It makes you want to put a little more deodorant on when thing like that happen. Hehehe! I may be a bit paranoid.

I bring this up, because my first instinct was to put his video up. But the one right above him, The Sheriff by The Strumbellas is flipping awesome! Plus, I’m sure I’m going to say something nice about Will a few thousand more times before I move on. So check this out and go to their website and let them know they got it!!

CXCW 2012 – The Strumbellas – “The Sheriff” from the unofficial on Vimeo.

If you don’t want to wait for my videos get posted, you can go here for Just Right, Give It Away, and Book of Blessings. I don’t want to take up the space posting them here. Just watch the Strumbellas again. Damn!

Thank you to the local farmers also! If you’d wish to support local farmers beyond coming down Saturday, you can donate to Farm Aid on the bottom right hand corner of this page. For anyone coming over from the Market page, Here’s a couple of my new songs. The rest can be found under the “music” tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy!

And did I mention you can watch all this for three bucks? Plus the artists will all have CDs for you to buy.I won’t be doing My So Called Life this time. Which means I won’t be giving away any CDs. But I’m always up for a good barter deal.

I’m not an expert in such things, so casting an opinion about the solution wouldn’t carry much weight. But I do have a strong and educated opinion about how we go about formulating a solution. I wrote a song about it…

First, we like to blame our politicians for being the  way they are. I certainly have hurled a few choice words at them. But there’s one truth you can’t escape. I can’t escape. We made them this way, and we continue to fuel that idiot fire with every passing day. We’ve shown them that appealing to the lowest common denominator is the best way to get us to open up our wallets to their campaign fund. We’ve shown them we can be manipulated and that we won’t hold them accountable outside the token staff member that that does 18 months at a minimum security prison. With early release for good behavior and a golden parachute on the side.

It goes beyond our politicians. An entire television industry is based on fueling our rage. Fox, MSNBC, and their ilk exist solely to cash in on what we have been taught to hate. Even news outlets that were once considered reputable have switched focus away from informing, and geared their programing toward hot button topics that are only news worthy for our inability to stop watching them.

So we probably watch more “news” than ever before. But I would argue we are less informed. The kicker? This is the place we choose to formulate a solution to our problems. If you think about it on a personal level, you only have to consider the decisions you’ve made in anger as opposed to those you’ve made in a calm state to realize the impossibility of what we are trying to do as a nation.

Our solutions to problems are often expensive and/or very high tech. It’s funny coming from me because of my love for technology. But it really shows our ignorance and our ability to avoid getting involved. When we don’t like something, we declare war on it. Drugs, terrorist, illegal migrants, etc. We rush to build a multi-billion dollar wall between the United States and Mexico and the people that want to come to this country dig a tunnel or go around at little or no expense. We invest billions to eavesdrop on terrorists conversations, and spend billions more to develop the means to kill them once we locate them. The terrorist find low tech ways around this like hand delivered messages. Or they learn to speak in code. We spend ever increasing amounts on specialized police units, both nationally and locally, to fight the war on drugs. While the people that use and distribute drugs find low tech ways to avoid being caught.

What we miss, and what is probably the most important lesson of the three “wars” we’re fighting above is that everything we do makes our opponent smarter. You hope that everything you do produces positive returns greater than your investment. But we’re operating at a loss in these wars and the only thing we have to show for it is more prisoners to feed, shelter, and guard. Of course, they’re honing their skills and getting even smarter being surrounded by like minds.

We’re not stupid, but we make stupid decisions and we’re afraid to go back on those decisions because that would make us look weak. And the vicious cycle just keeps on spinning. What we really need is a philosophical change in our decision making process. We don’t need to rush head first into situations because we’ve been scared there by the messages we’re bombarded with daily. If we’re worried about Mexican’s coming to America illegally, we should try to promote a solution that makes Mexico a better place to live and discourages them from wanting to leave. If we’re concerned about the effects of drugs and the violence that results, we should make drugs legal and spend the tax money on education and rehabilitation. I guarantee it would be cheaper, more efficient, and would keep one more taxpayer on the roster.

Lastly, and this deserves it’s own paragraph, despite how painful 9/11 was and is, it’s a war we will never win with violence. Seeing the results of drone attacks and the death of terrorist (and the civilian shields that we never give enough weight to) makes us feel good. But it has an equal and opposite reaction on the people we perceive as our enemies. It has that same effect on people we don’t perceive as our enemies, though. It’s a cycle that has no end we hope for.

There’s a philosophy in forth generation warfare (warfare pitting nation-states against non-aligned entities like al-Qaeda) that I’ll paraphrase, “where the state is weak, the insurgency will flourish.” The reason we don’t have Kings and Queens, or monarchies  anymore is because they lost their monopoly on waging war. They tried to govern people of too many varying backgrounds and unified these groups in a common enemy. What resulted was nation-states. But now, nation-states are threatened by new entities we call terrorists. Much like the kings created nation-states, countries have created terrorists through their actions. Destabilizing weaker countries to subjugate to their economic and political advantage. They created the hot-spots around the world where insurgencies can thrive by providing security and rule of law where the state can’t. No matter how brutal the rule of law might be, people would much rather live in a state of law than one of chaos. Until you unite them against you, at least.

Peace through violence can never be the only answer. In fact, it shouldn’t be the major player in any solution of this proportion. Giving power to the state is the only solution. It requires an investment and a hands off approach. Which is tricky, but in order for the state to have any legitimacy with it’s people it can’t have a foreign country propping it up. The cost of doing so wouldn’t be cheap. But as an investment toward one less security risk, the benefits would greatly outweigh the cost over time. Not to mention the perception the rest of the world would have of that act. To be wise and generous is a state of being all religions and ethnic backgrounds respect.

The one I recorded before the video is, Just Right. I was just giving pro tools a test run since I really hadn’t used it much since I finished the cd. It was a perfect storm to record it, so I did. The video that followed (last night) was one gif of a spinning globe I made, twisted in every way I could imagine. I can understand it gets kind of boring, since the pattern never really changes. Just the color. It’s visually striking enough to make me want to develop the skill.

My favorite is Muse. Wrote it after work yesterday. It’s about my issues with my muse. I’m trying to steer things in a different direction and it’s hard not to fall into the same old traps that make songs not as interesting. Trying to push myself to come up with more interesting guitar parts without going off on a tangent. To see all the videos, click the link at the top of the page.

As far as radio goes, My Plastic Lover should be on Suck-Free-Radio in the coming weeks. It was submitted to a request for love songs to tie in with Valentine’s Day. Thankfully they had a sense of humor and agreed to use it. I hope to be adding a few radio stations to the  list in the sidebar. I’ll keep you up to date.

I’d mentioned some good news on Facebook a couple weeks ago that I didn’t want to spill. The radio thing is part of it. The other part will have to wait. If throwing a song out there is like throwing a bottle in the ocean, this one is a bottle in a lake. But still it could sink to the bottom. Which isn’t really a bad thing. Throwing it was the hardest part.

image via: Siliconcloud